If an NPC is telling the truth, what's the Insight DC to know they're telling the truth?

S'mon said:

I don't request an ability check. I'm talking about case where player requests Insight check vs truthful NPC.

If I give a check on request I either say "You don't get a read on them" (Fail) or they notice signs of lying (if lying) or trustworthiness (if truthful).

I don't say "You believe them" if a lying NPC succeeds on a Deception check vs Passive Insight, or "You don't trust them" if PC fails Insight check vs truthful NPC Passive Deception.

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By "player requests Insight check" am I correct in understanding you to mean that the player declares his character is attempting to determine the true intentions of the truthful NPC? If so, is there a situation in which you wouldn't "give a check on request"?

Hriston said:

By "player requests Insight check" am I correct in understanding you to mean that the player declares his character is attempting to determine the true intentions of the truthful NPC? If so, is there a situation in which you wouldn't "give a check on request"?

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Yes that's what I mean.
Situation in which I would not give a check - I might give an auto success if it's blindingly obvious. I might (rarely) not give a check if for some reason the truth can't be down, eg they're using Insight vs a pre-programmed magic mouth or other artificial voice - the check might tell them it's a programmed voice, but probably not if the voice is lying. Normally though I default to say-yes-or-roll.

Hussar said:

Fair 'nuff I suppose. Probably reading too much into this anyway. It was meant as an off the cuff remark that I was surprised that DM's do this. Just something I'd never run across.

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Which is at least somewhat surprising, since it is RAW (PHB p 174, emphasis mine):
[SECTION]An ability check tests a character's or monster's innate talent and training in an effort to overcome a challenge. The DM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results.[/SECTION]
That said, I totally missed - or at least did not fully absorb - this passage when I started DMing 5e. I let players self-assign rolls which seemed ok as some of them had more RPG experience than I did and what did I know about D&D after not playing since 1e - but something just didn't feel right during our games for many months. I didn't recognize the solution until I started reading stuff from Angry and getting solid advice from folks here like [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION], [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], and [MENTION=6801286]Imaculata[/MENTION]. Our games have gone from usually fine to consistently very good. And it has had a lot to do with my DM approach to dice rolls.

Please don't misunderstand - I am in no way saying you are doing it wrong - if your group is having fun, you're doing it right! But you might give this way a try for a one shot or three to see how it feels for you and your group.

billd91 said:

I agree with you, generally. I think it's a bit ridiculous for a DM to expect a player to have the expertise their PC has, particularly with respect to something technical like trap finding and disarming. However, I would like players to interact with the room more than, "We search the room for traps." Let me know where you're searching, what order you're searching in, how thoroughly you're digging in - taking your time or being hasty because of the risk of someone else coming in the chamber - that sort of thing.

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Yes, and as DM, I want to limit the amount of assumptions I'm making about what the character is actually doing. For one, it's not my role as DM to say what the character does and, for another, I don't want to create a situation where the player may object to what I establish (e.g. "I didn't say I was moving toward the dragon statue..."). If a player states a clear goal and approach that takes into account the environment the DM just described, we neatly avoid any of these issues. What's more, the player may well be able to avoid rolling the dice with a good action declaration that results in automatic success which is more desirable than leaving your fate to a swingy d20.

Nobody is saying that anyone has to be an expert in anything. That is a ridiculous assertion with no basis in reality that gets trotted out in every related discussion and is thoroughly shot down every time. We should ask the people who keep making this assertion why they keep doing it. Because I'm starting to suspect it's not just a simple misapprehension.

Oofta said:

This is just a minor pet peeve of mine and I may be the only one who has this problem, but I personally am not trained in removing traps. My PC is. Why should I go into details of how I'm disarming the trap any more than I would describe the methods I'm using to calm a horse with animal handling? I don't deal with horses on a regular basis. Ask me how to approach a skittish cat and I might have some possibilities, but a horse? Not so sure.

So when it comes to traps, how the **** would I know the best approach? As a DM, I may say something like "in order to disable the trap it looks like you need to insert your hand into this hole, do you do it?" As a DM, I try to avoid "gotchas" so I start with the assumption they're just looking and build a scene with the character if it's not clear. That doesn't change whether they're investigating a trap or looking at an old book.

Anyway, it's just a pet peeve and one I've had since my AD&D days. Carry on.

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This is essentially what the player in my example took issue with, which is why when I talked to her after the game, I told her I know she’s not an expert trapsmith, and neither am I, I will do my best to take that into account and interpret her actions generously. As well, I pointed out that I consider it my job to give the players enough information to be confident in making their decisions. If there’s a trap to be found, I will telegraph it in such a way that you should be able to determine a decent way to detect it. I’m not asking for every detail of your search so I can spring a “gotcha” on you when you say the wrong thing, I just need to make sure that our mental pictures of what your character is doing agree. I don’t want to incorrectly assume what your character is doing and end up in an “I never said I was touching it!” argument.

Caliburn101 said:

This is a fun one...

… just think about it...

… have the player roll, and no matter what they roll, say "They appear to be telling the truth."

No DC needed!

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Why have the player roll if the result isn’t going to affect the outcome? Seems like this would undermine the players’ confidence in the consistency of your world’s responses to their actions.

Oofta said:

But then aren't you broadcasting that the NPC is telling the truth? Because the only other possibility is that they have such a high deception check that you're automatically going to fail which is extremely unlikely.

Which is why I would personally ask for a roll and then respond "they seem to be telling the truth" which is my normal go-to whether or not the NPC is telling the truth. Because the alternative is basically saying "you know they're telling the truth".

EDIT: To put it another way: a PC can always try to do something, even if there is no chance of success. To me the roll of the dice is the game mechanic of the PC attempting something. I don't always do this, sometimes I just say "no you can't lift that rock" but if the outcome is uncertain from the perspective of the PC, I do.

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To me, there's no uncertainty here, so I'm not going to spend time rolling just to make it seem uncertain to the players. The NPC is making its true intentions known, so no ability check is needed.

Hussar said:

Something that occurs to me that maybe is shaping my POV, is that I play online. And have done so for a long time. Which means that players can roll dice to me (the DM) without knowing the results of the roll. Fantasy Grounds, for example, has the Dice Tower, which means that anything rolled in the tower is only visible to the DM.

So, yeah, of course my players are going to drop dice without me asking. They don't know the results anyway, so, may just as well.

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In addition to generally running games in person, another difference in how we DM is that I don’t hide the results of my players’ dice rolls from them. Generally, I find that the more information players have, the more confident they feel in their decisions, the more rewarded they feel when their decisions yield positive results, and the less cheated they feel when their actions yield negative results. When I call for a check, I always tell the players the DC, and when it’s reasonable to do so, I tell them the potential consequences if they fail. For example, “That’ll be a DC 10 Dexterity check to cross the rope bridge. If you fail, you’ll fall off,” or “That’ll be a DC 15 Dexterity check with your Thieves’ Tools to disarm the trap, on a failure you’ll spring it.” Then I give the player the opportunity to back out. The reason being, I want characters to succeed and fail primary based on the players’ decisions. Telling the player the odds and the potential consequences allows them to make an informed decision instead of a blind guess, so success feels like you made a smart choice and failure feels like you took a calculated risk and it didn’t pay off, instead of success and failure seeming random.

I always strive to provide the players with opportunities to make decisions as they imagine their characters would, and to empower them to make those decisions confidently. I’ve found that when I do so, protestations about not having the same expertise as the character tend to disappear.

Hussar said:

Firstly, since we both agree that there are no auto succeeds or auto fails, what is changed by a player rolling before asking? If the task was impossible, it remains impossible. If the task was very easy, it remains very easy. Rolling beforehand changes nothing.

However, the notion that a player is not "entitled" to a skill check is something I strongly disagree with.

Earlier examples from [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] regarding his player would cause me, as a player to do nothing but grind my teeth. You don't ask me to describe my actions before I attack and I can certainly roll an attack roll without your permission, nor do you ask me to describe my actions before casting a spell. So, what's wrong with, "I'm trained in investigation - I check for traps"? The idea that somehow that makes me an "entitled" player is something I strongly object to.

And, as a DM, I have zero interest in gate keeping player skill checks. They can roll any time they want. Frankly I prefer it that way.

To me the fact that [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]'s very polite requests for why doing it your way helps the game were completely stonewalled and people immediately got defensive demonstrates that perhaps folks are a bit more controlling while sitting in the DM's chair than they think they are.

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To me, coming from a perspective of many different RPGs, not just different variations of dnd, the idea that referencing your character traits and aptitudes when communicating your character's choices is somehow going to cause new failure chances is staggering.

I refer back to comments like the one where the GM said an athletics roll for a climb means a chance of fail but if they just ask to climb it succeeds. Other comments also come up around these of it bring "good strategy" to not ask for rolls cuz rolls might fail, rolls must have a fail chance (which seems to backdoor in the "1 is failure" non-rule.)

For my gang, mix of decades long together and new players, we get both types of descriptions and a lot more in the range between. Success/fail is determined the same, regardless of how the player words the effort and whether or not the say "stealth check or not.

But for some, it sometimes seem like the process of these things seem to take on their own life and not be a means to get to the results.

Charlaquin said:

I don’t want to incorrectly assume what your character is doing and end up in an “I never said I was touching it!” argument.

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Arguments over things like this usually underscore, to me, exactly how much players don't know about the technical aspects of searching thoroughly and finding traps. In order to do a thorough search, you're damn well going to have to touch things! I always assume a visual inspection would precede really digging in. And if your searching check was good enough to find any traps that would have been triggered by touching them, you're golden - I'll take that into account. If it's not, then too bad. You'd have never gotten to the point of finding a more deeply laid trap or the goodies protected by the trap without a bit of touching anyway.